The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) is an open, interdisciplinary registry of unique identifiers for researchers. It is designed to unambiguously distinguish your research activities and outputs from those with similar names, facilitating the discovery and sharing of research online.

Launched in 2012, ORCID is now being used internationally by thousands of individuals as well as universities, publishers, and granting agencies to differentiate researchers and connect their work throughout its life cycle: from applying for a grant to publishing articles or data sets.

ORCID is available to anyone free of charge and requires only your name, email address, and a password to sign up.

Why does Duke support ORCID?

Author and researcher name ambiguity has been a long-standing problem in scholarly communications. The identification of individuals by their surnames and first initial(s) alone, has made it difficult to differentiate between two people with similar names. With the globalization of research and the dramatic increase in the volume of outputs, the ambiguity problem has only been exacerbated.

ORCID is designed to alleviate that problem by keeping a registry of unique identifiers for authors, researchers, and students that:

• Makes it possible for scholars and researchers to distinguish their work from that of others with similar names
• Keeps a unified record of one’s work that can then be reused during grant and manuscript submission, annual faculty reviews, and job applications
• Is being used by a large number of granting agencies, publishers, and universities to assist in accurately associating researchers and authors with their work – from the initial application for funding to the finished product – for recordkeeping purposes
• Is interoperable with other author identification systems such as ResearcherID or Scopus Author ID, reducing the data entry burden on researchers
• The Duke researcher publication system Elements can push data from your Elements profile to ORCID and match your individual ORCID to your publications to represent your work with fewer hours spent in data entry

How can I register my ORCID with Duke?

1. Your Duke Directory listing – It is possible for anyone at the University to associate an ORCID with their directory listing via the Office of Information Technology Account Self-Service Portal. If you do not yet have an ORCID, you can register for one through the Portal and authorize Duke to access your ORCID information. See the instructions for registering your ORCID with Duke.
2. Your Elements profile – Once you have connected your ORCID to your Elements account, any publications associated with your ORCID will be used to approve publications in your Elements profile, and from there included in your Scholars@Duke profile. It’s a quick and easy way to help keep your publications up to date. Elements can also push its publication data to your ORCID profile, saving you time and effort in keeping both profiles curated. See these instructions for adding your ORCID to your Elements search settings for more information.

 

Have a question? See the Frequently Asked Questions or contact scholarworks@duke.edu.